25th December

Originally broadcast 37 years ago today, The Murder at the Vicarage was the first of the Joan Hickson Marple Christmas Day treats. Two more would follow in 1987 and 1989 – although the final two adaptations (in 1991 and 1992) had slightly less prominent late December slots.

The Murder at the Vicarage is my favourite Miss Marple novel and T.R. Bowen’s adaptation more than does it justice (we’re back in an era when Christie adapters were content to treat the original novels with respect). Paul Eddington, as the somewhat bewildered Reverend Leonard Clement, heads the guest cast.

26th December

The Two Ronnies – The Studio Recordings has done the rounds multiple times since its original broadcast in 2010, but it’s something that I’ll always be happy to recommend. Pluses – the whole programme is devoted to the studio footage (allowing previously unseen sketches to run in full – rather than interrupt them every ten seconds with celebrity talking heads). Minuses – the footage is cropped to widescreen (something that regularly happened to 4:3 footage a decade or so ago – thankfully this isn’t the case now).

A pity that it didn’t lead to further dips into the archive, as I’ve no doubt there’s a fair few programmes which also have existing studio recording sessions. Maybe one day ….

Two Noël Coward plays – Playhouse – A Song at Midnight (1982 with Deborah Kerr and Paul Schofield) and The Wednesday Play – The Vortex (1969 with Margaret Leighton) also feature this evening. Both are available on the Noël Coward Collection DVD boxset, but I don’t think they’ve been on television since their original airings, so they’ll be new to many.

A Horizon documentary from 1967 with Isaac Asimov also looks to be worth setting the VCR for.

27th December

Today we’ve got the 1998 Goodness Gracious Me Christmas Special and the first four episodes of The Singing Detective. In my idle moments, I sometimes wonder why BBC4 has started to strip programmes like this across several days. It’s hard to imagine anyone having the stamina to actually watch four episodes in a row – so presumably it’s expected that people will PVR them or watch on the iPlayer. That’s reasonable enough, but I do appreciate the way Talking Pictures TV tends to broadcast their archive television programmes – once a week and in the same timeslot. Radical I know, but it worked for a fair few decades.

28th December

Bob Monkhouse – The Last Stand is another very familiar offering, but if by some miracle you’ve never seen it (or not for a while) then it’s well worth tuning in. What turned out to be his last stand up gig was set up in order to record material for a short series called Behind the Laughter (as it turned out, none of the footage filmed made the final cut)

Broadcast in October 2003 (just a few months before his death) Behind the Laughter saw a remarkably candid Monkhouse discuss and analyse  his comedy contemporaries. The likes of Morecambe & Wise, Tommy Cooper, Frankie Howerd and Benny Hill were some of those put under the microscope (and it’s fair to say that Bob didn’t pull his punches). As an aside, Behind the Laughter is well overdue a repeat.

The Last Stand does suffer from having too many contemporary talking heads – yes it’s nice to hear how much Bob was loved by his colleagues, but it’s a shame that we have to keep cutting away from Bob in order to hear them. Still, even in this form there’s a lot of interest here – not least when Bob introduces his surprise guest (Mike Yarwood) and has a surprisingly candid conversation.

That’s followed by another familiar, but still worthwhile, programme – Talking Comedy – Bob Monkhouse.

29th December

Top of the Pops – Christmas 1983. By a spooky coincidence, this is one I already had on my playlist (since I’m spending the Christmas fortnight in 1983).

The rest of the evening is spent in the company of The Chairman of the Board. The programme that’s caught my interest is a 1979 Arena documentary about My Way (which doesn’t look to have been repeated since 2008).

30th December 

I get the feeling BBC4 are having a day off – there’s three movies (The Sound of Music, the Finney Murder on the Orient Express and the Ustinov Evil Under The Sun) as well as another chance to see Yes Minister – Party Games. They could at least have swapped Evil Under the Sun for the Ustinov Death on the Nile (far superior) or maybe dug out the 1982 BBC Christie adaptation of Spider’s Web with Penelope Keith. Hey ho.

31st December

Larry Grayson’s Generation Game takes pride of place today. It’s the New Years Eve special from 1979 and it promises surprise guests. Should I do a bit of Googling to find out who’s on or resist the temptation? I’ll resist, for now …

Those hardy souls who have stayed up to hear the chimes of Big Ben will be able to wind down with And Now For Something Completely Different. The first Monty Python film (albeit one that few seem to remember) is certainly packed with quality sketches, the only problem is that they’ve already been done (and done better) on the television show. It’s turned up a fair few times on various BBC channels over the last decade (which surprises me a little). Maybe this is the year I’ll finally watch it.

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat, I wonder what programmes are lurking inside BBC4’s hat?

BBC4 continues to mine the archives over the Festive period. Some programmes will be old favourites that always seem to resurface at this time of year, but they’ve also dug a few rarities out (which gladdens the heart of an old grump like me). So let’s take a look at what’s on offer between the 18th and 24th of December.

18th December

The 1986 Christmas Day edition of Top of the Pops lurches from the sublime (Billy Ocean, A-ha, Pet Shop Boys) to the less than sublime (Nick Berry). I wouldn’t have said that 1986 was a classic year for music, but the track listing is pretty decent so it’s well worth a look.

Keeping Up Appearances (The Father Christmas Suit) and To The Manor Born (The First Noel) both received December 2022 BBC4 airings, so they should be familiar to most. ‘Allo! ‘Allo! (The Gateau from the Chateau) last surfaced in October 2022 (prior to that it hadn’t been aired since 2012 on BBC1). It’s my pick of the three, not least for its affectionate Danny Kaye homage ….

19th December

Last seen in 2013, the 1977 Top of the Pops Christmas show makes a comeback. I’ve written about it here – fair to say that the punk revelation has yet to breach the TOTP studio, but it’s a show that has its moments.

Also on today, Steptoe & Son – A Perfect Christmas.

20th December

Top of the Pops Christmas 1991, dinnerladies – Christmas and Les Dawson on Christmas all make a rapid return to the schedules (TOTP last aired in 2021, the other two in 2022).

More interesting to me is a new programme – Mike Yarwood at the BBC, hosted by Rory Bremner. Yarwood is a character who seems to be loved and slightly despised in almost equal measures (I no longer bother posting clips of him on Twitter/X as it becomes tiresome reading comments about what a bad impressionist he was).

Yes, hand on heart some of his impressions weren’t terribly accurate (although I tend to have more issues with the scripts, which often only offered predictable and corny gags). But any 1970’s LE show will always appeal to me – and you have to be impressed with the way The Mike Yarwood Show pushed against the technical limitations of the era. Some of the split screen work, for example, still stands up today.

21st December

Today’s TOTP treat is Christmas 1984, which gets bonus points for the Do They Know It’s Christmas? singalong in the studio at the end.

That’s followed by Sykes (which I’ve written about here). This last aired in 2022 – prior to that it had received two repeats in 1997 and 1999. I find it interesting that its original tx (12th December 1975) was so early in the month. Like his pal, Spike Milligan, Eric Sykes often railed at the decisions of the BBC management – so no doubt this piece of scheduling wouldn’t have appealed to him ….

Three cheers for The Good Life Christmas special (Silly But It’s Fun). This has bestrode the schedules like a colossus since 1998 (repeated every year from then on) although it’s surprising that prior to that, repeats were more sporadic (1981, 1983, 1990,  1992). It’s no hardship to watch again (my thoughts on it can be found here) but it still niggles me that Margo waited until the 24th of December to have all her Christmas goodies delivered. This has to be, in order to make the story work, but it’s still something that’s hard to swallow.

22nd December

BBC4 seem to have given up on the annual TOTP Christmas shows (the surviving 1971 – 1973 programmes, with a little judicious editing, would have gone down very nicely). Instead they give us a Top of the Pops – Christmas Hits compilation from 2016. It has some Xmas classics (Slade and Mud) but it also features the likes of Coldplay, so a finger on the fast forward button is recommended.

23rd December

A real rarity today – Parkinson takes a Christmas Look at Morecambe & Wise from 1974 (unseen since its original Christmas Day broadcast and never issued on DVD). Morecambe & Wise didn’t make a Christmas show in 1974 so this Parky fronted clipshow had to suffice. No doubt it’ll be packed with all the moments we’ve seen a million times before, but maybe there will be some new material (if only interviews). We shall see.

Cilla in Scandinavia makes a swift return to the schedules. How much you get out of this depends on your tolerance to our Cilla – but she was able to corral an impressive guest roster (Marvin, Welch & Farrar, Basil Brush, Ringo Starr).

24th December

I don’t think Last of the Summer Wine – Getting Sam Home has had a terrestrial repeat since 1984 (please let me know if I’ve missed any dates) which seems slightly amazing. A ninety minute special shot on film and with no laugh track, it was one of the jewels of the 1983 Christmas schedule (I’ll be spending the Xmas fortnight in 1983, so I’m sure this will be one to revisit).

Also on tonight are Yes Minister (Party Games) which I’ve written about here and One Foot in the Algarve.

After that is another rarity, Bruce Forsyth and Ronnie Corbett’s Christmas Special (albeit broadcast on Boxing Day) from 1988. Although it’s occasionally surfaced on YouTube it’ll be nice to have a better quality version. Little from the show has stuck in the mind, but maybe time has been kind to it (fingers crossed).

Rounding off the evening is The Two Ronnies’ Old Fashioned Christmas Mystery. It’s their Christmas show which tends not to be repeated that often (2008, 2017) so it’s a good decision to dig it out again. My old blog post about it can be read here.

Next week I’ll cast my eyes over the BBC4 schedule for the 25th – 31st December.